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Apple Confirms: No Demos In The Mac App Store

Following last night’s seeding of a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.6, Apple updated its Developer News portal with a few tips for developers to consider before trying to submit their Mac apps for approval. Among these tips (which include file system usage and custom graphical controls), Apple confirmed what many developers feared since the Mac App Store was announced: Apple won’t accept any kind of demo, trial or beta version in the new Store.

Apple is, in fact, suggesting developers to host demos on their own websites, as the Mac App Store only accepts retail versions of apps:

Your website is the best place to provide demos, trial versions, or betas of your software for customers to explore. The apps you submit to be reviewed for the Mac App Store should be fully functional, retail versions of your apps.

If you’re going to the trouble of having the customer go to your web site and install the software themselves, what’s the point of selling in the App store? Exposure, I suppose. And for the people who don’t mind buying software without being able to test it. (Who are these people?!)

For a company that makes things just work, you’re doing a good job of making this awfully hard.